Spent far too long this week arguing on internet forums, which is like fighting sand, no ones really interested in discussion and will never be convinced to change their opinion. Its just arguing for arguing’s sake.For a niche game Dragon’s Crown has been quite prominent in the games media over the last week or two, the reactions have been mixed, even from the same website (e.g. compare the varying response on Penny Arcade between the comic, the positive comments from Mr Holkins and Krahulik and the negative article from Mr Kuchera). Though a lot of the commentary has been questioning the design of the sorceress characer (and to a certain extent the amazon). Continue reading…
Category: game/play
This is probably going to consist mostly of me whinging about whatever rpg’s Im currently running, playing in or planning to run. Though conceptually its meant to cover all aspects of gaming which I indulge in. So we’ll see how it goes.
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 03 – System Matters
As I mentioned in the last post after fiddling with the core mechanic for The City I ended up re-assessing the system I was using for Ave Imperator. My original goal for the system was to have to be as “realistic” as possible. Which is somewhat of a silly goal, when people talk about realistic systems they generally mean a system with a decent level of verisimilitude. People want the system to “feel” real. Not necessarily fully simulate reality (because that would be both extremely complex and demanding and also runs the risk of being rather boring). To boil it down even further, all I really wanted was a combat system that felt fairly lethal, as when talking about rpg systems most people equate highly lethal or “gritty” combat with realism. The system I had was decent enough, as far as it went. It was a dice pool system that worked for the most part but had some odd probablity issues (mostly the weird scaling on the probability of success). It was also open to abuse in that attributes were much more useful than skills. Which wasnt really an issue per se as the player would never be manually generating any characters (more on that later). But after playing BRP for the first time in ages last week, and working on dice probability stuff for The City, I just couldnt leave the Ave Imperator system as it was. So I’ve come up with something new, and, I think anyway, better. At least in terms of combat its a bit more involved but also hopefully more fun. Continue reading…
The Woeful 108 – Quarterly Update 1
So back here I outlined my plan to curtail my spending on games and deal with my ever growing backlog. The list of games wasnt a goal, it was a leash. It’s been three months since then so how has it worked out so far? Continue reading…
Ave Imperator – Design Journal – 02 – Mirroring Lenin’s treatsie on steps
The title was just going to be “One step forward, two steps back”. But clearly that wasnt wanky enough for me. This is going to be short because its late and my thoughts, much like the organ they emanate from, are squishy and soft. I’ve abandoned UDK (don’t cry for me Epic) in favour of Unity. I then ran into one of the first problems I had with UDK – lack of cohesive learning material. There are few books for either (and software updates have made the ones that exist somewhat out of date). There are professional video tutorials, but they are a) for slightly older versions and b) despite telling you they will teach you how to use the program they will in fact teach you how to do one thing with the program, generally create a third or first person game. Which isnt really what I want to do. Continue reading…
Bioshock Infinite – My (brief) thoughts
Just finished it, it really picks up in the last third of the game. I thought the ending was predicatbly telegraphed, but worked in the context of the game. Its probably something you dont want to look to hard it. Overall the last part of the game really redeemed it for me, I still think it was trodding old ground but it did it very well. Solid 8/10 if I had to give it a number. Not sure how much replay value there is, got more or less all the collectibles and the combat wasnt engaging enough to make me play through it again. Took about 11 hours to complete, for once I actually would have preffered if it were a little shorter. Continue reading…
(Upcoming) Games of 2013 – Prelude to the deluge
This list is likely to change/expand pretty drastically after E3 when its likely the launch lineups for the PS4 and XBox720/Durango are announced. I’m not sure if I’ll be jumping to next gen straight away because as I mentioned over here I’ve got back into PC gaming in a big way. Well, thats most likely a lie. Unless the launch line-up is absolutely shit I’ll probably grab a PS4. Though I am interested in how theyre going to handle backwards compatability, particularly considering the amount of donwloaded/PSN content I’ve purchased.
Even without the infusion of next-gen stuff 2013 is looking like a pretty amazing year for gaming. A large number of titles that were originally slated for 2012 got pushed back and a number of highly anticipiated sequels to popular franchises are coming out this year as well. As well as looking at whether or not I’ll bother with next gen consoles theres also the question of whether or not I’ll bother with the Wii-U. My luck with Nintendo systems is mixed. While I owned a SNES I preferred my Megadrive. I never had, or played more than once, a N64. I got a lot of play out my Gamecube (worth it just for Eternal Darkness, Super Monkeyball and Animal Crossing). I was excited about the Wii, bought one and played it literally twice. On the other hand there’s a number of Wii-U exclusives that I really like the look of (SMTxFire Emblem, Monolithsoft’s X, The Wonderful 101, Bayonetta 2, maybe Zombi-U). I might pick one up when the majority of those games are out and the systems dropped in price. Knowing Nintendo I dont want to get stung when they do an early hardware revision. Continue reading…
The Woeful 108
Well seems my decision not to pick up the Wii-U was correct as two of the three games I was interested in have been pushed back to “later in the year”. Pity, the Wonderful 101 looked great. Anyhow, onwards to the main point of this. I have a lot of computer games. Which isnt a problem. The problem is that I havent actually completed (or in many cases played) the majority of them. Yet I still go out and buy new games. So I decided that a change was needed. That change is The 108. Continue reading…
EVE and I – Part 06 – Can you hear me, major Tom?
Well its been two days since my last post on EVE. In that time I’ve done some more mining and finally got around to trying out missions. I’ve also completed my goal of securing a +3 version of the basic attribute implant for four out of five stats. Continue reading…
EVE and I – Interlude – In space no can hear you scream “FFFUUUUUCCKKKK”
I have part six half finished and ready to go. I left it because I was tired and decided to head to bed. Couldnt sleep so I figured I’d just do one quick mission. Oh how I regret that. A quick bit of background, missions range from Level 1 – 4, each increase in level is a fairly big jump in difficulty (and usually in ship class). However thanks to siding with the Amarr during the Sisters of Eve ESA I’d enough standing with the Amarr to jump straight to Level 2 missions. I’d done about ten or so of them and while some of them had been tough I’d managed to pull through, earn some ISK and upgrade my Destroyer. So I logged in and requested a mission (which are semi random), got a simple courier mission which I banged out and figured, sure why not one more before I hit the hay? I wont have time to play tomorrow because I’ve loads of cooking and prep work to do for Christmas dinner. Oh past Mick, you are a fucking idiot. Continue reading…
EVE and I – Part 05 – Silent Night
When we last left our interpid capsuleer I was complaining that I wasnt really getting the return I wanted in my mining efforts. Unfortunately while I’ve done a number of things to address that I havent had a huge amount of success. On the other hand I have killed a lot of pirates, a lot a lot. So when I logged off the last time I was ready for a bit of a break from the game. But the next day (well technically later that day) Patrick, as always, pulled me back in. He needed help with a mission and I kindly decided to help him out. Of course the fact that I owned a destroyer entirely bereft of armaments or any kind of defense meant he was going to have to wait a little while for that to happen. Continue reading…